Directives

The control and query directives in this interface are supported in skills that target the following languages:

English (IN)

English (UK)

English (US)

German

SearchAndPlay

Requests to play a specific piece of content. This message contains the desired media object and URI obtained described as an entity. This message contains an array of entities that specifies what to search and play.

User: Alexa, watch titleUser: Alexa, titel anschauen

User: Alexa, play titleUser: Alexa, titel abspielen

User: Alexa, stream titleUser: Alexa, titel streamen

User: Alexa, start titleUser: Alexa, titel starten

Example Request

This example shows a request for a specific piece of content, "Manchester by the Sea"

{"directive":{"endpoint":{"scope":{"type":"BearerToken","token":"access-token-from-skill"},"endpointId":"videoDevice-001","cookie":{}},"header":{"messageId":"abc-123-def-456","correlationToken":"dFMb0z+PgpgdDmluhJ1LddFvSqZ/jCc8ptlAKulUj90jSqg==","name":"SearchAndPlay","namespace":"Alexa.RemoteVideoPlayer","payloadVersion":"3"},"payload":{"entities":[{"externalIds":{"gracenote":"MV000000099001"},"value":"Manchester by the Sea","type":"Video"}],"timeWindow":{"end":"2016-09-07T23:59:00+00:00","start":"2016-09-01T00:00:00+00:00"}}}}

SearchAndDisplayResults

Requests to search and then display the results of a search in a way that is appropriate for your application. This means that you could provide the user with a side-loaded search screen, send the results to a companion mobile app, or display them on a device. This message contains an array of entities that specifies what to search for.

User: Alexa, show me the movie Manchester by the SeaUser: Alexa, zeige mir den film Manchester by the Sea

Example Request:

{"directive":{"endpoint":{"scope":{"type":"BearerToken","token":"access-token-from-skill"},"endpointId":"appliance-001","cookie":{}},"header":{"messageId":"abc-123-def-456","correlationToken":"dFMb0z+PgpgdDmluhJ1LddFvSqZ/jCc8ptlAKulUj90jSqg==","name":"SearchAndDisplayResults","namespace":"Alexa.RemoteVideoPlayer","payloadVersion":"3"},"payload":{"entities":[{"externaIds":{"gracenote":"ST0000000666661"},"name":"Manchester by the Sea","type":"Video"}],"timeWindow":{"end":"2016-09-07T23:59:00+00:00","start":"2016-09-01T00:00:00+00:00"}}}}

Provides the time window for the content the customer wants to play. For example if a customer wants to play an episode from last week, time window would indicate the preceding week.

list of end time and a start times

No

timeWindow.end

The end time for the content search.

string containing a time in ISO 8601 format

No

timeWindow.start

The start time for the content search.

string containing a time in ISO 8601 format

No

Handling Ambiguous Play Requests

Similar to SearchAndDisplayResults, SearchAndPlay supports multiple entity types, including a content title, franchise name, actor, director, sports team, media type and more. This means one of these directives may contain an ambiguous entity request.
For example, a customer could request: